Robert Gates Says Israel Is an Ungrateful Ally: Jeffrey Goldberg

Sept. 6 (Bloomberg) -- It was an extraordinary scene:
President Barack Obama, sitting impassively in the Oval
Office in May as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
lectured him, at considerable length and at times
condescendingly, on Jewish history, Arab perfidy and the
existential challenges facing his country.

What was extraordinary wasn’t the message -- it was
not an untypical Netanyahu sermon. What was notable was
that Netanyahu was lecturing the president live on
television, during a photo opportunity staged so that the
two leaders could issue platitudes about the enduring bonds
between their nations.

That display of impudence left the president and his
team feeling unusually angry. Shortly afterward, Obama’s
chief of staff, William Daley, called the Israeli
ambassador in Washington, Michael Oren, to communicate the
displeasure of the White House in a reportedly heated way.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who watched her husband
battle Netanyahu in the late 1990s, also expressed anger
and frustration about the prime minister within the
administration.

Nothing in Return

But it was Robert M. Gates, the now-retired secretary
of defense, who seemed most upset with Netanyahu. In a
meeting of the National Security Council Principals
Committee held not long before his retirement this summer,
Gates coldly laid out the many steps the administration has
taken to guarantee Israel’s security -- access to top-quality weapons, assistance developing missile-defense
systems, high-level intelligence sharing -- and then stated
bluntly that the U.S. has received nothing in return,
particularly with regard to the peace process.

Senior administration officials told me that Gates
argued to the president directly that Netanyahu is not only
ungrateful, but also endangering his country by refusing to
grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the
demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the
West Bank. According to these sources, Gates’s analysis met
with no resistance from other members of the committee.

Frustration and Resentment

Gates has expressed his frustration with Netanyahu’s
government before. Last year, when Vice President Joe
Biden’s visit to Israel was marred by an announcement of
plans to build new housing units for Jews in East
Jerusalem, Gates told several people that if he had been
Biden, he would have returned to Washington immediately and
told the prime minister to call Obama when he was serious
about negotiations.

Gates’s frustration also stems from squabbling with
Netanyahu over U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other
Arab allies. In an encounter in Israel in March, according
to U.S. and Israeli sources, Netanyahu lectured Gates at
length on the possible dangers posed to Israel by such
sales, as well as by Turkey and other regional U.S. allies.
Gates, a veteran intelligence officer, resented Netanyahu’s
tone, and reminded him that the sales were organized in
consultation with Israel and pro-Israel members of
Congress.

Palestinian State

The reason the administration’s hard feelings toward
Netanyahu matter now -- and the reason several officials
spoke to me on this subject last week -- is that the U.S.
is once again going to the mat for Israel at the United
Nations, where Palestinians intend to seek recognition of
an independent state in September.

The White House plans to contest this resolution in
the General Assembly (where the move already has majority
support), and the U.S. would most likely veto it in the
Security Council. The Obama administration is right to
oppose this ploy, which would undermine the chances of
reconciliation and could lead to an explosion of violence
on the West Bank. But they’ll oppose it in spite of
Netanyahu, not to help him.

Dislike of Netanyahu has deepened in a way that could
ultimately be dangerous for Israel. Time after time, the
White House has taken Israel’s side in international
disputes -- over the UN’s Goldstone Report, which accused
Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza; over Israel’s
confrontation with the pro-Hamas Turkish “flotilla,” in
which nine people were killed; and on many other issues.

Yet the Netanyahu government does little to dispel the
notion among its right-wing supporters that the Obama
administration is at best a wavering friend. This is self-evidently foolish, especially at a time when Israel faces
an existential threat from its menacing neighbor Iran.

A Blunt Articulation

Gates’s feelings about Netanyahu are particularly
consequential, in part because he’s not considered hostile
to Israel, and in part because he’s a well-regarded figure
who articulated bluntly what so many people in the
administration seem to believe. Gates declined to comment
for this column through his former spokesman, Geoff
Morrell. But Morrell told me that Gates “worked extremely
hard throughout his four and half years as secretary of
defense to address Israel’s security concerns.”

A Pentagon spokesman, George Little, said that Gates’s
successor, Leon Panetta, “agrees with what President Obama
and former Secretary Gates have both said, which is that
our defense relationship with Israel is stronger than
ever.”

When I asked Oren, the Israeli ambassador, about
Gates’s often-expressed feelings toward Netanyahu, he said,
“We have nothing but the highest regard for Secretary
Gates, and as allies, we don’t exchange accusations, we
have communications. Israel deeply appreciates the
excellent security relationship we have with the Obama
administration.”

Netanyahu’s alienation of the White House has not gone
unnoticed in Israel. Tzipi Livni, the head of the Kadima
Party, said in a recent interview with me and Atlantic
editor James Bennet that the average Israeli is more
attuned to the importance of maintaining good relations
with the U.S. president than is the current prime minister.

“For Israelis,” she said, “when they wake up in the
morning and ask themselves, what is the general situation
today, the litmus test for them is the health of the
relationship between Israel and the United States.”

(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a
national correspondent for the Atlantic. The opinions
expressed are his own.)